The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1887-05-26
AN HEIRESS OF RED dog.
BY BRET HARTE.
copyrighted by Houghton, Miff1in & Co., and
published by arrangement with them.l

The first intimation given of the eccentricity
1854. He was at that time in possession of
considerable property, heavily mortgaged to
one friend, and a wife of some attraction, on
whose affections another friend held an in
cumbering lien. One day it was found that
he had secretly dug, or caused to be dug o
deep trap before the front door of his dwell
ing, into which a few friends, in the course
of the evening, casually and familiarly
dropped. This circumstance, slight in itself,
seemed TO point to the existence of certain
humor in the man, which might eventually
get into literature, although his wifes lover
a man of quick discernment, whose leg was
broken by the fall-took other views. 1t was
some weeks later that, while dining with GER
tain other friends of his wife, he excused him
self from the table to quietly reappear at the
front window with a three-quarter inch hy-
draulic pipe, and stream of water projected
at the assembled company. An attempt was
made to take public cognizance of this; but a
majority of the citizens of Red Dog, who
were not at dinner, decided that man had q
right to choose his own methods of diverting
his company. Nevertheless, there were some
hints of his insanity; his wife recalled other
acts clearly attributable to dementia; the
crippled lover argued from his own experience
that the integrity of her limbs could only be
secured by leaving her husbands house; and
the mortgage, fearing further damage to
his property, foreclosed. But here the cause
of all this anxiety took matters into his own
hands and disappeared.
When we next heard from him he had, in
some mysterious way, been relieved alike Of
his wife and property, and was living alone at
Rockville, fifty miles away, and editing a
newspaper. But that originality he had dis
played when dealing with the probisms of his
own private life, when applied to politics in
the columns of The Rockville Vanguard was
singularly unsuccessful. An amusing exag-
geration, purporting to be an exact account
of the manner in which the opposing candi-
date had murdered his Chinese laundryman,
was, / regret to say, answered only by as
sault and battery. gratuitous and purely
imaginative description of a great religious
revival in Calaveras, in which the sheriff of
the county-a notoriously profare skeptic-
was alleged to have been the chief exhorter,
resulted only in the withdrawal of the county
advertising from the paper. In the midst of
this practical confusion he suddenly died.
1t was then discovered, as a crowning proof
of his absurdity, that he had left a viii be-
-queathing his entire effects to a frecllle faced
maid servant at the Rockville hotel. But
that absurtlity became serious when it was
also discovered that among these effects were
q thousand shares in the Rising Sun Mining
company, which n day or two after his de-
mise, and while people were still laughing at
his grotesque benefaction, suddenly sprang
into opulence and celebrity. Three millions
of dollars was roughly estimated as the value
OF the estate Thus wantonly sacrificed. For
1t is only fair to state, as just tribute to the